There Are No Ordinary People: All Saints' Day and the Weight of Glory

I will live a life of expectation 11226 1412

0:00

/1597.5967346938776

1×

I will live a life of expectation, knowing Christ will come again.

I have spent twelve weeks unpacking
the "Twelve I wills" of the Belonging House Commitment.
These are not rules.
These are cultural values.
As you have seen,
we are trying to create a culture.
Seth Godin put it this way:
People like us do things like this.

People like us
are disciples of Jesus.
People like us are being formed by the Bible.
People like us go low and serve.
People like us are not building ministries.
People like us are forward thinking,
listening to the Lord
and trying to be in step with Jesus.
People like us are full of the Holy Spirit.
People like us are artists and creative people
who sparkle with eternity.
And people like us know
that what we see around us is not it.
This is not the end.
We know that history is going someplace
and that the reason God is raising up an army of artists
is to prepare a way for the coming of the Lord.
We are not trying to be a nice Christian arts ministry
that makes everybody feel comfy while they paint in their
"Color Me Inspirational" Bibles.

No.

We are a band of holy warriors
and we are learning more and more
that the Kingdom of Jesus is on the move.

It is also All Saints' Day.
There are two errors about the concept of saints.
One is that we are all saints because we are in the pews.
Everybody is a saint.
This is a cheap dumbing down what the New Testament describes.
Nobody arrives at the destination if they think they have already gotten there.
The second error
is to say that the saints are superheroes of the faith.
Their exploits are impossible,
and you will never get there.
So just be a slob and hope to get through.

The New Testament word translated "saint,"
as I have mentioned several times in this series,
is the word "holy" used a noun.
Literally,
if you are reborn by water and the Holy Spirit
you are a new creature: a holy.
And your responsibility is to learn how to live into
the reality of being "a holy."
You are moving from the illusion
that you are a mere mortal
into the reality that you are an eternal creature.
What we see here is just a piece of reality.

One of the books we recommend to people
who come to Belonging House is
The Catholic Religion by Vernon Staley.
In that book
Staley describes the church
as a big tree.
Imagine a Christmas tree.
We see the lower branches.
And there are lights on these branches,
but most of the lower branches are lit from above.
What we see around us
is that bottom row.
Some of it looks good,
and some of it looks tatty.
And if we look up,
there are more branches
and more lights and the higher you look
the nicer it becomes
and at the top
is the star.

The Morning Star.

How brightly shines the Morning star,
with mercy beaming from afar
the host of heaven rejoices.
The Righteous branch, O Jesse's rod,
the Son of Man and Son of God
we too will lift our voices.
Jesus.

When I planned this series,
I purposely planned it to end on All Saints' Day.
Contemporary Christianity
is incredibly earthbound and secular.
This last "I will"
puts it all in perspective.
I am a disciple of Jesus
because this life is not it.
I am an artist for the Kingdom
for something Greater.
It is not about me.
It is about the King.
And the King is coming,
and every eye will see him.

St. John says to us in the third chapter of his first letter,
See what love the Father lavishes on us,
that we can be called children of God.
And so we are.

The reason the world does not know us
is that the world does not know him.

Let's stop right there.
The World does not know Jesus
and if you are a child of Jesus
you are going to share in the family resemblance.

One of the great tragedies of the last generation
is this belief
that if we become relevant to the world,
then people will come to our church
and maybe some will become disciples.
That is worldly thinking.

Opposites attract.
When you play the world's game
you become like the world.
Jesus said,
blessed are you when everyone talks bad about you.
Blessed are you when you are misunderstood.
Rejoice and be glad.
Your name is written in heaven.

There is something
intentionally foreign
about being a new creation.
A holy.

And then John goes on to say:
We are God's children now,
but we do not look like what we will look like.
We are "already, but not yet" people.

We know
when Jesus returns
we will look like what we are.
We will become the thing that we always were.
The mask will come off,
and it will be glorious.

And so
we choose to live a life that is pure now.
A life that is transformed
as you present your body
as a living sacrifice
and renew your mind day by day.

You are made for eternity.

You are made to live a life of expectation.

C.S. Lewis
expounded on the ideas in this verse
in his lecture,
"The Weight of Glory."

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,
to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person
you can talk to may one day be a creature which,
if you saw it now,
you would be strongly tempted to worship,
or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet,
if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are,
in some degree,
helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities,
it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them,
that we should conduct all our dealings with one another,
all friendships,
all loves,
all play,
all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—
these are mortal,
and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with,
work with, marry, snub, and exploit—
immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.

We must play.
But our merriment must be of that kind
(and it is, in fact, the merriest kind)
which exists between people who have,
from the outset, taken each other seriously—
no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
And our charity must be a real and costly love,
with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—
no mere tolerance,
or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,
your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.
If he is your Christian neighbour,
he is holy in almost the same way,
for in him also Christ vere latitat—
the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

Lewis, C. S.. Weight of Glory (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (pp. 45-46). (Function). Kindle Edition.

You are called
to be "a holy."
A completely different kind of being.
We are called to make a way
for the coming of the Lord.

That way making is two fold,
we are called to make a way inwardly.
The ultimate goal
is for you to become more and more
an image of Jesus.
You are being transformed from one degree of glory
to another.
You are being transformed
from the inside out
into a master copy
of Jesus
the icon of the Father.
If we have seen Jesus
we have seen the Father,
and if you become a Master copy,
then people will see you and see the Father.
You are an icon.
You are a sign.
You bear the mystery of the Faith.
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.

And then you are called to make a way
for the coming of the Lord
outwardly.
Your work
and your life
point to the same mystery.
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.

The work of your life,
knowing your craft
is a sign and symbol
of something more.
There is more to your life
than just having a career.
Your life is a sign post to the world around you
to something else,
to a world beyond our senses
and an age to come
when Jesus Christ will rule and reign on the earth
and the whole world will see his glory.

The trick
is not to get weird
and not to be religious.
The trick is to keep a Kingdom perspective
and no matter what you see in this life,
stop and ask Jesus
what his perspective is.

I am reading a wonderful book,
The Spirit of the Liturgy by
Pope Benedict XVI.
He says that every sacred image
is an image of Christ,
and somehow
in that image
we are always saying
this is the one who was crucified,
this is the one who rose from the dead,
and this is the one who will come again.
This is the point.

Your life
is a sacred image.
You are an icon.
Whether you write,
dance,
act,
paint,
sculpt,
or sing,
all of it
points somewhere.
It points forward
to the East.
And when you look
you see that the one who is coming in the clouds,
and he is attended with his holy ones
and the holy angels,
and they are coming to
make all things right.

And when he comes
we are given the duty
to make this place
a place of welcome for him.